Construction output bounced back strongly in February after weather-related weakness in December and January but the sector is still likely to act as a significant drag on the first-quarter GDP estimate released later this month. There should, however, be a corresponding boost to the second quarter.<\/p>\n
Construction accounts for 6% of GDP. Output is estimated to have risen by a seasonally-adjusted 8% in February from an upwardly-revised January level but was still 9% below the fourth-quarter average and 14% lower than in November, before the snow struck. It seems reasonable to assume that the November level will be regained in March or April – construction new orders rose by 18% between the third and fourth quarters and surveys suggest that weakness was temporary. Assuming a March return and stable output thereafter, construction would subtract 0.4 percentage points from GDP growth in the first quarter while adding 0.8 points in the second.<\/p>\n
The rest of the economy may grow by about 0.75% in the first quarter, assuming modest further gains in services output in February and March and a reversal of the February decline in industrial production. The construction effect would then imply GDP growth of 0.3-0.4%. This shortfall would be offset in the second quarter. If non-construction output rose by a further 0.5%, GDP expansion would increase to 1.3%, based on the above assumptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Construction output bounced back strongly in February after weather-related weakness in December and January but the sector is still likely to act as a significant drag on the first-quarter GDP estimate released later this month. There should, however, be a corresponding boost to the second quarter. Construction accounts for 6% of GDP. Output is estimated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money-moves-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5508,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3199\/revisions\/5508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmm.9dotdigital.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}